All these heads are carved from solid blocks of basalt. The smallest have a height of 1.5 m, the largest - about 3.5 m. Most of the Olmec heads are about 2 m. Accordingly, the weight of these huge sculptures ranges from 10 to 35 tons!
When looking at the heads, many questions immediately arise, to which the omniscient science wants to get a clear answer. The facial features of each of the 17 giant heads are not individual and they all have one thing in common - characteristic negroid features. Where did the Negroes come from in pre-Columbian America, if, according to official science, there could not have been any contacts between Africa and America before Columbus? And the Olmecs themselves did not look like blacks at all, which follows from numerous other figurines and figurines. And only these 17 heads are endowed with Negroid features.
With the help of what tools, in the absence of metal (again, according to the official version), was basalt processed with such accuracy and detail, one of the most durable stones from which the heads are made? Is it another stone?
How were multi-ton blocks, some up to 35 tons in weight, delivered to the processing site 90 km from their place of extraction through the jungle over rough terrain? Despite the fact that (according to the same version) the Olmecs did not know the wheels (by the way, it has already been proven that they knew).
Why make them so big? After all, the Olmecs have many other sculptures, including heads, of quite normal size and completely American (Indian) appearance. And only these 17 black faces are an exception. Why are they so honored? Or is it life size?
Now let's try to answer these questions...
Photo 2. 
The Olmec civilization is considered the first, "mother" civilization of Mexico. Like all other first civilizations, it arises immediately and in a “ready form”: with developed hieroglyphic writing, an accurate calendar, canonized art, and developed architecture. According to the ideas of modern researchers, the Olmec civilization arose around the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. and lasted for about a thousand years. The main centers of this culture were located in the coastal zone of the Gulf of Mexico in the territory of the modern states of Tobasco and Veracruz. But the cultural influence of the Olmecs can be traced throughout Central Mexico. Until now, nothing is known about the people who created this first Mexican civilization. The name "Olmec", meaning "rubber people" is given by modern scientists. But where did this people come from, what language did they speak, where did they disappear after centuries - all these main questions remain unanswered after more than half a century of research into the Olmec culture.
The Olmecs are the oldest and most mysterious civilization in Mexico. These peoples settled along the entire coast of the Gulf of Mexico, around the third millennium BC.
Coatzecoalcos was the main river of the Olmecs. Its name means " Sanctuary of the Serpent».
According to the legends, it was in this river that the farewell to the ancient deity Quetzalcoatl took place. Quetzalcoatl or Great Kukulan, as the Maya people called him, was a feathered serpent and a mysterious person. This serpent had a powerful physique, noble features, and, in general, a completely human appearance.
I wonder where he came from among the redskins and beardless Olmecs? According to legend, he came and went on the water. It was he who taught the Olmecs all the crafts, moral principles and counting time. Quetzalcoatl condemned sacrifice and was against violence.
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The largest monuments of the Olmecs are San Lorenzo, La Venta and Tres Zapotes. These were real urban centers, the first in Mexico. They included large ceremonial complexes with earthen pyramids, an extensive system of irrigation canals, city blocks and numerous necropolises.
The Olmecs achieved real perfection in the processing of stone, including very hard rocks. Olmec jade products are considered to be the masterpieces of the ancient american art. The monumental sculpture of the Olmecs included multi-ton altars made of granite and basalt, carved stelae, and human-sized sculptures. But one of the most remarkable and mysterious features of this civilization are the huge stone heads.
The first such head was found back in 1862 in La Venta. To date, 17 such giant human heads have been found, ten of them come from San Loresno, four from La Venta, the rest from two more monuments of the Olmec culture. All these heads are carved from solid blocks of basalt. The smallest are 1.5 m high, the largest head found at the Rancho la Cobata monument reaches 3.4 m in height. The average height of most Olmec heads is about 2 m. Accordingly, the weight of these huge sculptures ranges from 10 to 35 tons!
Photo 6. 
All heads are made in a single stylistic manner, but it is obvious that each of them is a portrait of a particular person. Each head is surmounted by a headpiece, most reminiscent of an American football player's helmet. But all hats are individual, there is not a single repetition. All heads have elaborate ears, decorated with large earrings or ear inserts. Ear piercing was typical tradition for all the ancient cultures of Mexico. One of the heads, the largest one from Rancho la Cobata, depicts a man with eyes closed, all the other sixteen heads have their eyes wide open. Those. each such sculpture was supposed to depict a specific person with a characteristic set of individual features. It can be said that the Olmec heads are images specific people. But despite the individuality of the features, all the giant heads of the Olmecs are united by one common and mysterious feature.
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The portraits of the people depicted on these sculptures have pronounced Negroid features: a wide flattened nose with large nostrils, plump lips and big eyes. Such features do not fit in with the main anthropological type of the ancient population of Mexico. In Olmec art, whether it be sculpture, relief or small plastic, in most cases the typical Indian appearance characteristic of the American race is reflected. But not on giant heads. Such Negroid features were noted by the first researchers from the very beginning. This has led to the emergence of various hypotheses: from assumptions about the migration of people from Africa to claims that such racial type was characteristic of the most ancient inhabitants of Southeast Asia, who were part of the first settlers to America. However, this problem was rather quickly "released on the brakes" by representatives of official science. It was too inconvenient to think that there could have been any contacts between America and Africa at the very dawn of civilization. The official theory did not imply them.
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And if so, then the Olmec heads are images of local rulers, after whose death, such original ones were made memorial monuments. But the Olmec heads are really a unique phenomenon for ancient America. In the Olmec culture itself, there are still similar analogies, i.e. sculpted human heads. But unlike the 17 "Negro" heads, they depict portraits of people of a typical American race, are smaller and made in accordance with a completely different pictorial canon. There is nothing similar in other cultures of ancient Mexico. In addition, one can ask a simple question: if these are images of local rulers, then why are there so few of them, if we talk about the thousand-year history of the Olmec civilization?
And what about the problem of negroid traits? Whatever the ruling in historical science theories, besides them there are also facts. An Olmec vessel in the form of a seated elephant is kept in the Anthropological Museum of Xalapa (Veracruz).
It is considered proven that elephants in America disappeared with the end of the last glaciation, i.e. about 12 thousand years ago. But the elephant was known to the Olmecs, so much so that it was even depicted in figured ceramics. Either elephants still lived in the Olmec era, which contradicts paleozoological data, or Olmec masters were familiar with African elephants, which contradicts modern historical views. But the fact remains, you can, if not feel it with your hands, then see it with your own eyes in the museum. Unfortunately, academic science diligently bypasses such awkward "trifles". In addition, in the last century, in different parts of Mexico, and on monuments with traces of the influence of the Olmec civilization (Monte Alban, Tlatilco), burials were discovered, the skeletons in which anthropologists identified as belonging to the Negroid race.
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Giant Olmec heads ask researchers a lot of paradoxical questions. One of the heads from San Lorenzo has an inner tube connecting the sculpture's ear and mouth. How could such a complex internal channel be made in a monolithic basalt block 2.7 m high using primitive (not even metal) tools? Geologists who have studied the Olmec heads have determined that the basalt from which the heads at La Venta were made came from quarries in the Tuxtla Mountains, which, measured in a straight line, are 90 kilometers away. How did the ancient Indians, who did not even know the wheel, transported stone monolithic blocks weighing 10-20 tons over rough terrain. American archaeologists believe that the Olmecs could use reed rafts, which, along with the cargo, were floated down the river to the Gulf of Mexico, and already along the coast they delivered basalt blocks to their urban centers. But the distance from the Tuxtla quarries to the nearest river is about 40 km, and this is a dense swampy jungle.
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In some myths about the creation of the world, which have survived to this day from various Mexican peoples, the emergence of the first cities is associated with newcomers from the north. According to one version, they sailed in boats from the north and landed near the Panuco River, then went along the coast to Potonchan at the mouth of Jalisco (the ancient center of the Olmecs, La Venta, is located in this area). Here the aliens exterminated the local giants and founded the first of those mentioned in the legends. Cultural Center Tamoanchan.
According to another myth, seven tribes came from the north to the Mexican highlands. Two peoples already lived here - the Chichimecs and the Giants. Moreover, the giants inhabited the lands to the east of modern Mexico City - the regions of Puebla and Cholula. Both peoples led a barbaric way of life, obtained food by hunting and ate raw meat. Newcomers from the north expelled the Chichemecs, and exterminated the giants. Thus, according to the mythology of a number of Mexican peoples, the giants were the forerunners of those who created the first civilizations in these territories. But they could not resist the aliens, and were destroyed. By the way, a similar situation took place in the Middle East and it is described in sufficient detail in the Old Testament.
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Mentions of a race of ancient giants that preceded historical peoples are found in many Mexican myths. So the Aztecs believed that the earth was inhabited by giants in the era of the First Sun. They called the ancient giants "kiname" or "kinametine". The Spanish chronicler Bernardo de Sahagun identified these ancient giants with the Toltecs and believed that it was they who erected the giant pyramids at Teotehuacan and Cholula.
Bernal Diaz, a member of the Cortes expedition, wrote in his book “The Conquest of New Spain” that after the conquistadors entrenched themselves in the city of Tlaxcala (east of Mexico City, Puebla region), the local Indians told them that in very ancient times people settled in this area great stature and strength. But since they had bad temper and bad customs, the Indians exterminated them. In support of their words, the inhabitants of Tlaxcala showed the Spaniards the bone of an ancient giant. Diaz writes that it was a femur and its length was equal to the height of Diaz himself. Those. the growth of these giants was more than three times the height of an ordinary person.
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In the book The Conquest of New Spain, he describes how the Indians told them that in ancient times people of enormous stature settled in these places, but the Indians did not agree with their characters and killed everyone. Quote from the book:
« They also reported that before their arrival the country was inhabited by giants, rude and wild, who then either died out or were destroyed. As proof, they showed the femur of such a giant. Indeed, it was the size of my full height, and I'm not small. And there were a fair number of such bones; we were amazed and horrified at such a breed of past times and decided to send samples to His Majesty in Spain».
Russian translation of the book: http://www.gramotey....140358220925600
the quote is taken from the chapter "Friendship with Tlaxcala".
There was no point in lying to the author, matters were discussed much more important than long-extinct and non-dangerous giants, and it was said and shown by the Indian in passing, as a matter of course. And yes, the book is about something else. And if a modern TV channel can still be suspected of falsifying facts in order to raise the rating, then a person who publicly promises to send “non-existent” giant human bones to the king 500 years ago can only be suspected of idiocy. Which, having read his book, is very difficult to do.
Traces of giants were found in this area and in the manuscripts of the Aztecs (Aztec codices), who later lived in the same places, in the form of drawings, and in many Mexican myths.
Drawing from an Aztec manuscript. Judging by how many people pull one big man, he is also very heavy. Maybe it's his head imprinted in stone?
Photo 17. 
In addition, from various sources it is clear that the ancient giants inhabited a certain territory, namely the eastern part of central Mexico up to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. It is quite legitimate to assume that the giant heads of the Olmecs symbolized the victory over the race of giants and the winners erected these monuments in the centers of their cities in order to perpetuate the memory of the defeated predecessors. On the other hand, how can such an assumption be reconciled with the fact that all giant Olmec heads have individual facial features?
Photo 18. 
Maybe those researchers who believe that giant heads were portraits of rulers are right? But the study of paradoxical phenomena is always complicated by the fact that such historical phenomena seldom fit into a system of habitual logic. That's why they are paradoxical. Moreover, myths, like any historical source, are subject to influences dictated by the current political situation. Mexican myths were written down by Spanish chroniclers in the 16th century. Information about events that happened dozens of centuries before that time could be transformed several times. The image of the giants could be distorted to please the winners. Why not assume that the giants were rulers in the Olmec cities for some time? And why not also assume that this ancient people giants belonged to the Negroid race?
The ancient Ossetian epic "Tales of the Narts" is all imbued with the theme of the struggle of the Narts with the giants. They were called Waigi. But, what is most interesting, they were called black waigs. And although the epic never mentions the skin color of the Caucasian giants, the adjective "black", in relation to the waigs, is used in the epic as a qualitative, and not as a figurative concept. Of course, such a comparison of facts relating to ancient history peoples so distant from each other may seem too bold. But our knowledge of remote epochs is too scarce.
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It remains only to recall the great poet A.S. Pushkin, who used the rich heritage of Russian folklore in his work. In "Ruslan and Lyudmila" main character collides with the head of a giant, standing alone in an open field and defeats it. The same theme of victory over the ancient giants and the same image of a giant head. And such a coincidence cannot be a mere coincidence.
Graham Hancock in the book "Traces of the Gods" writes: "The most amazing thing was that Tres Zapotes was not a Mayan city at all. It was completely, exclusively, undeniably Olmec. This meant that it was the Olmecs, and not the Maya, who invented the calendar, that it was the Olmec culture, and not the Maya, that was the "progenitor" of the cultures of Central America ... Olmecs much older than Mayan. They were a skillful, civilized, technically advanced people, and it was they who invented the calendar with dots and dashes, in which the starting point is a mysterious date. August 13, 3114 BC
Most Olmec stone heads depict a person with Negroid features. But 2000 years ago there were no black Africans in the New World, the first of them appeared much later than the conquest, when the slave trade began. However, there is solid evidence from paleoanthropologists that, as part of one of the migrations to the territory of the American continent during the last ice age, people really got into negroid race. This migration took place around 15 thousand years BC
At San Lorenzo, the Olmecs built an artificial mound more than 30 meters, as part of a huge structure 1200 meters long and 600 meters wide. Archaeologist Michael Coe during excavations in 1966, he made a number of finds, including over twenty artificial reservoirs connected by a very complex network of gutters lined with basalt. Part of this network was built into the watershed. When this place was excavated, the water again began to pour from there in a stream in heavy rains, as it had done for more than three thousand years. The main drainage line ran from east to west. Three auxiliary lines were cut into it, and the junctions were made very competently from a technical point of view. After carefully examining the system, archaeologists were forced to admit that they could not understand the purpose of this complex system of water conduits and other hydraulic structures.
Olmecs still remain a mystery to archaeologists. It was not possible to find any traces of the evolution of the Olmecs, as if this people appeared from nowhere. Nothing is known about social organization, rituals and belief system of the Olmecs, what language they spoke, what ethnic group they belonged, not a single Olmec skeleton has been preserved.
The Maya inherited their calendar from the Olmecs, who used it a thousand years before the Maya. But where did the Olmecs get it from? What level of technical and scientific development civilization to develop such a calendar?
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No one knows where they came from, where their homeland was. They appeared on the territory of modern Mexico about three and a half thousand years ago and began to build cities and build pyramids. They created a special hieroglyphic script that no one can read yet. As a memento to their descendants, they left giant heads carved from basalt. Who are they, the Olmecs? Their history is full of question marks, and even recent archaeological research does little to clarify their fate.
Paradise defeated, dumb, devoid of speech
Ramon Lopez Velarde
It was these stone heads with slanting eyes and thick lips that glorified the Olmec people. Lost among tropical vegetation, these meter-long blocks, carved from solid basalt, seem to be eternal. The first of these prehistoric sites was discovered in 1862 south of Veracruz, in a swampy area on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The head, which was considered a fragment of a destroyed statue, reached one and a half meters in height and weighed about eight tons. What could be then the colossus itself, looking from a height of many meters at the surrounding forest? And was there a colossus?
So suddenly declared itself ancient civilization, completely forgotten by descendants and preserved by the wilds of the forest. It arose in the eastern part of Mexico, where, it would seem, there were no prerequisites for the formation great culture. Why exactly here, among the dense tropical forests and swamps, among the labyrinth of rivers and streams, was born a civilization that became a model for many nations?
Today, historians consider the Olmecs to be the "fathers of local history", the "cultural heroes" of Mesoamerica - Mexico and Central America - the forerunners of the Maya, Zapotecs and Aztecs. 1200 to 400 BC new era, that is, in the era, by the standards of the Old World, between the Trojan War and the "Golden Age of Athens", the Olmecs dominated the entire region. Their works of art were highly valued, they were imitated by the tribes and peoples living here, their religion was adopted, their political orders were sought to be borrowed, and their economic skills were learned.
And despite all this, the real study of their culture began only six decades ago.
Rome of the New World
Numerous rivers made it easier for the Olmecs to move from one end of the country to the other. The main means of transport were boats and - in the case of freight transport - rafts. Without this, it would be extremely difficult to make your way through the forest thicket, and the small tribes of hunters and gatherers who settled here would remain disunited, would live in the same primitive wildness as the inhabitants of the Amazon forests. Every year the rivers flooded, bringing fertile muddy sediment to the fields. The land in this hot, humid country could produce two crops a year.
The staple food was maize; beans and cassava, pumpkins and sweet potatoes were also grown in the fields. Domestic animals were bred: dogs (their meat was also used as food), turkeys and, possibly, tapirs, as well as bees. Fishing was a common activity. The abundance of food made it possible to stock it and free part of the population from agriculture. Many Olmecs became artisans, artists, scientists.
IN early period of their history - at the time when the royal-loving Egyptians immortalized the name of Tutankhamun with his unforgettable tomb, the Olmecs built houses surrounded by bulky mud walls. Centuries later, when Homer was composing his Odyssey, the fundamental principles of their architecture were different. Clay buildings, which required regular repairs, were replaced by hewn stone dwellings.
The oldest Olmec settlement, San Lorenzo, was founded in a swampy area around 1500 BC. Three centuries later, a ceremonial center was built here, and a city was built on an artificial embankment 12 meters high and 1200 x 770 meters in size. According to scientists, for the construction of this embankment, about ten million tons of earth had to be transported here. All this was done by people who did not know the wheel, who had neither carts nor draft animals, who lived in a country where there were no roads.
Archaeologists have discovered an underground plumbing system in San Lorenzo. Numerous stone statues and colossal heads were erected in the city. However, around 900 BC, stone sculptures are destroyed. Perhaps the city was captured by alien tribes, and its population - about a thousand people lived here - fleeing the war, fled. But there are other assumptions...
Since that time, the city of La Venta, founded around 1000 BC, has become the most important center of the Olmecs. His history is well documented. The city occupied an area measuring 2.5 x 1 kilometer, where up to 18 thousand people lived. They were mainly engaged in agriculture and handicrafts, primarily in the processing of jade.
In the middle of the city, a pyramid of rammed clay was erected 31 meters high. The dimensions of its base were 178 x 73 meters. Outwardly, it resembled a volcano with grooves along the slopes. On the upper platform of the pyramid, there was probably a temple in which a sacrificial fire burned - it symbolized the crater of a volcano.
archaeological finds made here testify to the absence of metals and at the same time a brilliant ability to process stone and clay, from which vessels and figurines were made. The symbol of wealth in La Venta, and later throughout Central America, was jade. Jade jewelry was placed in the tombs of rulers and their entourage. Particularly curious are the so-called mosaic courtyards - panels, most often with the image of a jaguar. As soon as such a courtyard was completed, it was immediately covered with earth, probably dedicating it to the underground gods. It was believed that the entrance to their world was guarded by a divine jaguar, or a jaguar-man.
During the excavations of La Venta, everything was found that is found in the study of the ruins of any large city that arose in Mesoamerica in the next two and a half thousand years. Like the European capitals of the New Age, comparing their appearance with the streets and squares of Rome, the Mayan and Toltec cities also tried to look like La Venta. Monuments of architecture and crafts, platforms for ritual ball games, cultural achievements (hieroglyphic writing, calendar) - all these characteristic features of the Olmec civilization are now preserved and inherited by the peoples inhabiting Mesoamerica, like the Latin of the Romans in the Old World, like Roman numerals and the Julian calendar. It is among the Olmecs that an elite is formed for the first time in the history of this region. It was the Olmecs who first began to worship the main deity of Mesoamerica - the Jaguar. The Olmecs also created a number system corresponding to that of the Maya.
stone heads Olmec
A stone head found a century and a half ago made historians talk about a mysterious people who lived in ancient times on the outskirts of Mexico and were distinguished by their love for huge statues. Now we know that the idea was not statues - heads. They certainly can be called one of the strangest sculptures in the world. Round heads, without any hint of a neck, rest directly on the ground. In principle, they can only be compared with commemorative idols from Easter Island. Let those on average be three to four times higher, but the heads of the Olmecs are more than two thousand years older, and they are much more skillfully executed. The largest of them reaches a height of 3.4 meters and weighs 50 tons.
The monumental sculpture of the Olmecs - in comparison with the European one - is almost reduced to balls topped with some kind of helmet - a headdress worn during a ritual ball game. With inexpressible sadness, these, as if beheaded, heads look at us. Archaeologists do not know who served as the prototype for unusual sculptures: the Olmec rulers, their warriors, or maybe famous ball players (according to one hypothesis, executed ball players)? After all, we sometimes honor athletes more than writers or scientists!
The round faces of the statues look swollen and sometimes resemble the plump faces of children. They have thick, often frankly capricious lips, large almond-shaped eyes, a rounded chin, fleshy cheeks, and very flat, wide noses. The forehead, often quite high, is hidden under a tightly pulled down helmet, the edge of which almost reaches the eyes, and the side plates cover the ears. The back of the head, as a rule, is finished very carelessly or not at all. Helmets are only outlined. Apparently, the sculptors paid the main attention to the faces of these people, trying to convey their individual features with amazing liveliness and realism. Looking at these images, one can seem to recognize the moods and characters of their prototypes. Some look at you with surprise, sometimes openly cheerful, others are very angry or vicious.
These heads were cut down in the Las Tuxtlas mountain range and delivered 60 to 125 kilometers to the place where they were installed. Their transportation is a brilliant "engineering" solution. According to historians, right in the quarries, the blanks of future sculptures were laid on skids and dragged to the nearest river, from where they were floated on large rafts. And already right on the spot, where they intended to install another commemorative head, the craftsmen began to grind this bulk, cutting lips, eye sockets, and a thick, flattened nose into it. In the same way, probably, other Olmec monuments were built, striking in their size.
The skill of stone cutters is also surprising, because the tools with which they processed basalt blocks were the most primitive: stone chisels, simple drills and sand, which replaced sandpaper. The Olmecs didn't have metal tools and there was no stone tools harder than basalt!
Who were these "sculptors"? Where did they come from? Why did they take up their hard labor? “All these are questions that, unfortunately, the Olmecs do not want to answer to us,” emphasizes the German archaeologist Hans Prem. At the time of their appearance in this part of Mexico, the local Indians “led a nomadic way of life; constantly emerging new tribal unions, and therefore it makes no sense to talk about the concept of "ethnos".
Heyerdahl's predecessors?
Arguing about the origin of the Olmecs, scientists have put forward several hypotheses that seem very curious.
Some historians are looking for the origin of this people on the Pacific coast of Mexico - in the territory of the state of Guerrero. But this is the least sensational theory, since it recognizes the Olmecs as in fact the original natives of these places.
According to another hypothesis, they came here from the coast of Ecuador, where one of the oldest ceramic cultures in the New World developed in 3000-2700 BC. It is possible that some of the tribes there eventually moved far north, to Mexico, wandering along the Isthmus of Panama or moving on ships and boats along the coast.
Finally, the third and, perhaps, the most unexpected hypothesis says that the Olmecs are a people that formed far from the coast of America, somewhere in Africa, Asia (Mongolia, China) or on the islands of Oceania. It is supported by the fact that the famous stone heads have a certain similarity with both the Negroids and the narrow-eyed inhabitants of East and Southeast Asia, as well as with the Polynesians. These thick-lipped, narrow-eyed statues would look just as appropriate somewhere on the coast of Ghana or southern China. They are nothing like the portraits of the Maya or the Aztecs known to us from later wall paintings.
Perhaps it was the Olmec rulers who were the very people (or deities) that the myths of the Aztecs and Mayans tell about, these “cultural heroes” who sailed from the sea to teach the inhabitants of Mexico everything without which culture is unthinkable, that is, art and craft , the ability to cultivate the land and count the passage of time. So far, there is no confirmation of this hypothesis, but it cannot be ruled out, because in recent decades enthusiasts, starting with Thor Heyerdahl, proved that people of antiquity could cross the oceans on the most primitive boats, winning their place under the sun somewhere "at distant lands, thirty seas." Isn't that what the Olmec writings say?
The puzzling language of Cascajal
In 1999, in the state of Veracruz, while laying a road, a stone slab was accidentally found - the so-called "panel from Cascajal" measuring 36 x 21 x 13 centimeters. This slab resembles an A4 sheet cut out of stone, only noticeably thicker and weighing about 12 kilograms. According to current ideas, not a very suitable thing to write something on it. However, it was she who served the Olmecs as a "notebook".
In 2006, it was possible to prove that the drawings imprinted on this stone are hieroglyphs (previously, researchers have repeatedly found images of icons left by the Olmecs, but it was not possible to unequivocally confirm that these are written symbols). A slab from Cascajal is a much more compelling argument in favor of the Olmecs' ability to express thoughts, if not on paper, then on stone tablets. According to Mexican archaeologists Carmen Rodriguez Martinez and Ponciano Ortiz Ceballos in an article published in the journal Science, in this case we are talking about Olmec hieroglyphic writing - the oldest written monument found in America. It dates from around 900 BC.
Among the images inscribed on the stone, there are likenesses of fish, insects, maize cobs. There are 62 characters in total, and some are repeated more than once. By all external signs, this set of characters corresponds to the written text. All icons are clearly separated from each other and arranged in separate horizontal lines. The division of icons into different groups, each consisting of several characters, is clearly guessed. Several times a certain sequence of characters is repeated. According to linguists, this may indicate that we are dealing with a poetic work, where there are refrains of individual lines. So this inscription can also be considered ancient monument poetic art found in Mesoamerica.
That's just the meaning of the inscribed is completely incomprehensible to scientists. So far, deciphering the Olmec inscriptions seems hopeless. After all, even Egyptian hieroglyphs, brought to us by numerous papyri and obelisks, could only be read after the Rosetta Stone was found with inscriptions in ancient Greek and two types of ancient Egyptian writing - demotic and hieroglyphic.
Perhaps the Olmec language will be unraveled when new inscriptions are discovered. It is hardly surprising that the only lengthy text left by the Olmecs is on a stone slab. Entire libraries of historical, legal, poetic texts of this lost civilization could be inscribed on materials of plant origin, long decayed in the tropical climate of Mesoamerica. This find, the well-known German specialist in Maya culture Nikolai Grube believes, decisively changes our understanding of the Olmec culture: “Now we have the right to believe that writing in Ancient America originated in the Gulf of Mexico.
So, the first scribes appeared in America at the latest around 900 BC? Until now, scientists believed that this happened four centuries later. In the Old World, namely in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the first written texts date back to the III and even IV millennia BC. Does this mean that the ancient Americans were far behind in their development from the builders of the first powers of the Ancient East? Maybe we still do not know the archeology of the New World well, and somewhere in the backwoods, “stone letters” of distant millennia are still waiting to be discovered?
It is curious that the surface of this stone slab is concave, and this indicates unique technique inscriptions: the old text was apparently scraped off, and then new characters were cut into the cleaned surface. Another unexpected discovery!
Neither fathers nor mothers...
Among the whirlwind of the tribes that inhabited Ancient Mesoamerica, in a series of their allies and enmities, the Olmecs appeared “like snow on their heads”, “like a tornado in the steppe”. Their name - "people of the country of rubber", however, was invented. It is known that in the Gulf of Mexico during the time of the Aztecs, that is, shortly before the arrival of the Spaniards in Mexico, there lived a people who called themselves the Olmecs. It was this name in the first half of the twentieth century that was given to the creators of an unknown culture bronze age found in Mexico. In fact, there is no evidence that the contemporaries of the Aztecs were descendants of that mysterious people that created about three thousand years ago the culture that we today call "Olmec". How those ancient people called themselves, honored by the accidental nickname - "Olmecs", we really do not know. Modern researchers more often, by the way, use the more correct term "people of the culture of La Venta."
It is not difficult to guess that a strict hierarchy was established in the Olmec society - there is no other way to explain the appearance of these basalt monuments, which required an incredible effort. Such statues could only be created where a small group of people, who constituted the elite, commanded a multitude of subjects belonging to the lower caste - among the workers who could be sent a hundred kilometers to transport multi-ton stone blocks. Historians continue to argue about who ruled Olmec society - "leaders", deified kings or priest-kings.
They also discuss other aspects of Olmec history and culture. Is it true that they were the progenitors of all subsequent cultures of Mesoamerica? According to the apt remark of Nikolai Grube, “they were neither fathers nor mothers; they were brothers, because chronologically they lived at the same time with some of them. Of course, the Olmecs to a very large extent influenced the Mayan world, but, meanwhile, "in the lowlands of Guatemala, the Mayan culture was formed quite independently."
Did they create their own "empire"? So far, we do not have any facts proving the presence of this "superpower of American antiquity" on the world map. Anthropologist from the USA Doris Hayden writes in this regard: “Some scientists see in the Olmec phenomenon only art style... A good example for comparison would be the Gothic style, which originated in France and became widespread in other European countries, in Germany, England and Spain, despite the fact that we have no right to talk about some kind of "Gothic Empire" that existed in those centuries. Probably, we also cannot talk about the existence of the Olmec power.
In turn, other historians, having denied the Olmecs the right to pass with fire and sword from Monterrey to San Salvador, like the Assyrians or the Aztecs, diligently decorate them with “whisks of roses”, talk about their “amazing peacefulness”, about their unwillingness to fight and dislike for weapons, which is also debatable.
Only one thing can be said with certainty, that the Olmecs actively developed the lands surrounding the area of their settlement. Archaeologists find their colonies and trading posts far from their original possessions. It is authentically known that the trade relations of the Olmecs stretched for more than one and a half thousand kilometers. They traded with distant regions in iron ore, shells, minerals, tortoise shells, stingray bones, jade products, and ceramic vessels.
Some researchers do not even exclude the possibility that they could maintain contact with the civilizations of Peru, because there they also revered a deity in the form of a jaguar, which was worshiped by the Olmecs. What if they also established their colonies on the coast of Peru?
And now everyone is disappearing - both the ancient colonies and the Olmecs themselves ...
The geography of the flight
At the turn of the 5th - 4th centuries BC, La Venta was destroyed, and the colossal Olmec heads were deliberately damaged.
Historians do not know why the largest Olmec cities perished. It looks like their population was fleeing. Perhaps the reason was the war with one of the neighboring cities, which forced the inhabitants of the defeated metropolis to seek salvation. Another likely reason is civil war or an uprising of peasants who refused to obey the elite. Another disaster could be "collapse": the population of cities increased to such an extent that they could not find food for themselves. So, a thousand years later, an economic catastrophe stopped the further development of the Mayan civilization (see "3-C", 1/07).
However, the history of the Olmecs is still a different case. It does not seem that they have exhausted all development resources. And there are no signs of natural destruction here. Cities are not burned to the ground, not plundered. They, if such a technical term is appropriate, were "systematically dismantled." The monuments were scraped off, hewn off, smashed into pieces, and then carefully buried on the surrounding hills. There are no cases in history when invaders or rebellious poor treated the fallen shrines so respectfully.
Maybe the Olmecs ritually destroyed their religious centers? In the later cultures of Mesoamerica, it was traditionally believed that every 52 years a certain life cycle. After that, various ceremonies were performed that brought renewal. Perhaps these beliefs date back to the time of the Olmecs. And if the rituals did not bring the desired help, and the hardships and troubles only continued to grow, then maybe the frightened people decided to sacrifice the ancient temples and the city in which their ancestors had lived for many centuries? What if for this reason San Lorenzo and then La Venta were abandoned? After all, these are not the first and not the last capitals left by their people. Is it here, serving in new town, the inhabitants of the former capital solemnly buried its very spirit, dismantling the worthless shrines and sending them to realm of the dead- digging into the ground. Now the past could no longer prevent them from building a life in a new place. The gods, who “must have gone mad” and instead of good began to bring only evil, were sent to that world, from where no one has ever returned.
Olmec sculptures
In addition to the colossal heads, almost three hundred more monumental sculptures left by the Olmecs were discovered. It's about first of all, about the steles that they installed everywhere, and giant altars. The largest altar was about four meters long, one and a half meters wide and 1.8 meters high.
In addition, the Olmecs made miniature sculptures from terracotta, obsidian, amethyst and rock crystal, but primarily from jade. The most expressive are the so-called Babyfaces, "baby heads", or Tigerfaces, "tiger heads". In them, even more clearly than in the colossal heads, the resemblance to children puffed up with anger is expressed. Some make creepy faces. Perhaps these portraits are somehow connected with the cult of the jaguar deity? Maybe the Olmecs considered their rulers to be earthly incarnations of the "Great Jaguar"?
This is also hinted at by a stone altar found in La Venta. A crouched human figure is visible in a semi-circular niche under the table top - perhaps a priest - while a stylized image of a jaguar savagely grinning is engraved on the edge of the table.
The wind knows the answer
It seems that archaeologists have managed to answer the question of where the Olmecs got the jade from which they made their skillful figurines. As you know, when the Spanish conquistadors conquered America, they looked everywhere for gold and silver, but, to the surprise of the Indians, they remained indifferent to the most valuable thing in the world - to "blue jade", a rare bluish-green variety of this mineral, usually colored to whitish green. The Indians used this mineral, at the earliest, from 1400 BC. The Olmecs carved human figures and masks from it, designed to inspire horror. But where did they get these valuable stones from?
“The wind knows the answer,” archaeologists would say. When another hurricane hit Central America in 1998, it led to numerous landslides. At the same time, in some rivers of Guatemala, whole placers of blue jade were suddenly discovered. The American archaeologist Russell Seitz, who had been searching for its deposits for decades, turned out to be sensitive to this sign and began to explore the banks of the rivers in the mountainous area in the south-east of Guatemala. There he found what he was looking for: meter-long walls of jade, shimmering in blue and green tones. The archaeologist discovered here both abandoned ancient mines and the remains of a road along which the Indians exported valuable raw materials. The location of the mines was kept in the strictest confidence - for fear that robbers would penetrate here.
The place where the writing is
Olmec writings were discovered in a quarry near the village of Kaskajal ("Place where there is rubble"). Builders have been quarrying stone here for years to pave roads, and archaeologists have explored this quarry with the same tenacity in search of ancient artifacts. When in 1999, workers discovered fragments of pottery and clay figurines here, the find attracted the attention of archaeologists, and soon an inconspicuous, at first glance, slab covered with ancient hieroglyphs was found in the same area of the quarry.
The history of the stone from Cascajal is amazing; some scientists even refuse to believe in " miraculous salvation» of this plate. “These kinds of sensational finds, completely taken out of the archaeological context, often turned out to be fakes,” admits Hans Prem. - That's why the title of an article in Science - "The most ancient writing New World" - should at least be accompanied by a question mark.
People have always been interested in ancient civilizations and their incredible ability to create megaliths. One such mystery is the carved stone heads of the Olmec civilization, discovered in Mexico. These ancient giant sculptures depict people's heads with flat noses, slightly slanted eyes and puffy cheeks. On this moment seventeen mysterious stone heads have been unearthed, but no one knows why they are located in one place or another, why they were made and how they were delivered to the places where they are now found.
The first archaeological studies of the Olmec civilization date back to 1938. Oddly enough, these expeditions began to take place through quite long time after the discovery of the first giant head in 1862 in Tres Zapotes.
Seventeen giant Olmec stone heads have been found in four locations along the Gulf Coast, in places where the Olmec civilization once flourished.
Most Olmec stone heads were carved from round boulders, except for two huge heads from San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan, which were carved on giant stone thrones. It is curious that another monument, a massive stone throne, which is located in Takalik Abah in Guatemala, may have been carved in reverse - from a colossal head.
This monumental throne is the only known example of such a carving found in more than 4 places where stone heads have been found. The exact age of these colossal heads has not yet been fully established. Scientists have studied four sites where Olmec heads have been found - San Lorenzo, La Venta, Tres Zapotes and Rancho la Cobata - to get an idea of how they are related.
The monumental heads at San Lorenzo were buried around 900 BC, but there is clear evidence that they were made much earlier. Interestingly, despite the fact that (according to scientists) the heads from San Lorenzo are the oldest of all, they amaze with their perfect carving.
Dating at other sites is more difficult - the sculptures at Tres Zapotes were moved from their original site before they were examined by archaeologists, and the heads at La Venta were partially excavated and removed from the ground when they were discovered. Thus, the actual period of creation of giant Olmec heads can cover both a hundred and a thousand years.
All Olmec stone heads are from the Early Preclassic Mesoamerica (1500 BC - 1000 BC), although two heads at Tres Zapotes and one from Rancho la Cobata are recognized as being from middle preclassic period (1000 BC - 400 BC). Basically, the Olmec civilization was located on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in a section about 275 km along the coast and 100 km inland (now there are two modern Mexican states of Tabasco and Veracruz in this place.
The Olmec civilization is considered the first "major" culture in Mesoamerica - it existed in this area of Mexico between 1500 BC. and 400 BC As one of the "Six Cradles of Civilization" in the world, the Olmec civilization is the only one that developed in the rainforest. It is believed that the carving and placement of each colossal stone head had to be approved and coordinated by the Olmec rulers.
Also, the construction had to be carefully planned, taking into account the efforts involved in obtaining the necessary resources and labor. Thus, it seems that only the most powerful Olmecs could afford such a thing. As for the labor force, far from only sculptors were needed, but also boatmen, carpenters, overseers and other artisans who helped create and move the sculpture.
In addition to this, they also needed the staff needed to feed all the workers. Seasonal cycles and river levels also had to be taken into account in order to plan for the production of huge sculptures. In fact, the entire project, from start to finish, could have taken years. Archaeological examination of Olmec creations suggests how exactly these stone heads were made.
First, the boulders were first roughly processed, breaking off both large and small rock fragments. Finer carvings were then made using a sculptural hammer. In the final stage, abrasive materials were used for grinding. Olmec stone heads are distinguished by the fact that they usually had carefully carved faces, and much less scrupulously approached the details of headdresses and ear ornaments.
All seventeen stone heads were carved from basalt stone, which was mined in the Sierra de los Tuxlas mountains in the state of Veracruz. These boulders have been found in areas affected by large volcanic landslides, which "lowered" huge boulders down the mountain slopes. The Olmecs carefully selected boulders that were originally spherical in shape to make them easier to shape. human head. Then the boulders were transported from the mountain slopes to a distance of up to 150 km.
Modern scientists are perplexed how the Olmecs could transport such huge masses of basalt, especially since they did not have draft animals, and this civilization did not use the wheel. Olmec heads vary in weight from six to fifty tons, and in height from about 1.5 to 3.65 meters. back of these stone monuments often made flat.
This has led scientists to speculate that the heads were originally leaned against the wall while the carvers worked. All giant Olmec stone heads have unique headdresses. It is assumed that the Olmecs made (naturally, in life, and not on sculptures) similar headdresses from animal skins or fabric.
Some of the stone heads even show a knotted knot at the back of the head, while others have feathered headdresses. Also, most heads have large earrings in their earlobes. All heads are realistic replicas of men. It is likely that they were sculptures of famous Olmec rulers. All 17 stone heads are on a permanent basis in Mexico, mainly in anthropology museums.
Materials: thevintagenews.com
In continuation of the topic for everyone who is interested in the history of ancient civilizations.
No one knows where they came from, where their homeland was. They appeared on the territory of modern Mexico about three and a half thousand years ago and began to build cities and build pyramids. They created a special hieroglyphic script that no one can read yet. As a memento to their descendants, they left giant heads carved from basalt. Who are they, the Olmecs? Their history is full of question marks, and even recent archaeological research does little to clarify their fate.
Paradise defeated, dumb, devoid of speech
Ramon Lopez Velarde
It was these stone heads with slanting eyes and thick lips that glorified the Olmec people. Lost among tropical vegetation, these meter-long blocks, carved from solid basalt, seem to be eternal. The first of these prehistoric sites was discovered in 1862 south of Veracruz, in a swampy area on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The head, which was considered a fragment of a destroyed statue, reached one and a half meters in height and weighed about eight tons. What could be then the colossus itself, looking from a height of many meters at the surrounding forest? And was there a colossus?
So suddenly an ancient civilization declared itself, completely forgotten by the descendants and preserved by the wilds of the forest. It arose in the eastern part of Mexico, where, it would seem, there were no prerequisites for the formation of a great culture. Why exactly here, among the dense tropical forests and swamps, among the labyrinth of rivers and streams, was born a civilization that became a model for many nations?
Today, historians consider the Olmecs to be the "fathers of local history", the "cultural heroes" of Mesoamerica - Mexico and Central America - the forerunners of the Maya, Zapotecs and Aztecs. From 1200 to 400 BC, that is, in the era, by the standards of the Old World, between the Trojan War and the "Golden Age of Athens", the Olmecs dominated the entire region. Their works of art were highly valued, they were imitated by the tribes and peoples who lived here, their religion was accepted, their political order sought to be borrowed, and their economic skills learned.
And despite all this, the real study of their culture began only six decades ago.
Rome of the New World
La Venta: a giant mosaic of green serpentine Numerous rivers made it easy for the Olmecs to move from one end of the country to the other. Boats were the main means of transport and, in the case of freight traffic- rafts. Without this, it would be extremely difficult to make your way through the forest thicket, and the small tribes of hunters and gatherers who settled here would remain disunited, would live in the same primitive wildness as the inhabitants of the Amazon forests. Every year the rivers flooded, bringing fertile muddy sediment to the fields. The land in this hot, humid country could produce two crops a year.
The staple food was maize; beans and cassava, pumpkins and sweet potatoes were also grown in the fields. Domestic animals were bred: dogs (their meat was also used as food), turkeys and, possibly, tapirs, as well as bees. Fishing was a common activity. The abundance of food made it possible to stock it and free part of the population from agriculture. Many Olmecs became artisans, artists, scientists.
In the early period of their history - at the time when the royal-loving Egyptians immortalized the name of Tutankhamen with his unforgettable tomb - the Olmecs built houses surrounded by bulky mud walls. Centuries later, when Homer was composing his Odyssey, the fundamental principles of their architecture were different. Clay buildings, which required regular repairs, were replaced by hewn stone dwellings.
The oldest Olmec settlement, San Lorenzo, was founded in a swampy area around 1500 BC. Three centuries later, a ceremonial center was built here, and a city was built on an artificial embankment 12 meters high and 1200 x 770 meters in size. According to scientists, for the construction of this embankment, about ten million tons of earth had to be transported here. All this was done by people who did not know the wheel, who had neither carts nor draft animals, who lived in a country where there were no roads.
A sample of the Olmen steleArchaeologists have discovered an underground plumbing system in San Lorenzo. Numerous stone statues and colossal heads were erected in the city. However, around 900 BC, stone sculptures are destroyed. Perhaps the city was captured by alien tribes, and its population - about a thousand people lived here - fleeing the war, fled. But there are other assumptions...
Since that time, the city of La Venta, founded around 1000 BC, has become the most important center of the Olmecs. His history is well documented. The city occupied an area measuring 2.5 x 1 kilometer, where up to 18 thousand people lived. They were mainly engaged in agriculture and handicrafts, primarily in the processing of jade.
In the middle of the city, a pyramid of rammed clay was erected 31 meters high. The dimensions of its base were 178 x 73 meters. Outwardly, it resembled a volcano with grooves along the slopes. On the upper platform of the pyramid, there was probably a temple in which a sacrificial fire burned - it symbolized the crater of a volcano.
Archaeological finds made here testify to the absence of metals and at the same time a brilliant ability to process stone and clay, from which vessels and figurines were made. The symbol of wealth in La Venta, and later throughout Central America, was jade. Jade jewelry was placed in the tombs of rulers and their entourage. Particularly curious are the so-called mosaic courtyards - panels, most often with the image of a jaguar. As soon as such a courtyard was completed, it was immediately covered with earth, probably dedicating it to the underground gods. It was believed that the entrance to their world was guarded by a divine jaguar, or a jaguar-man.
During the excavations of La Venta, everything was found that is found in the study of the ruins of any large city that arose in Mesoamerica in the next two and a half thousand years. Like the European capitals of the New Age, comparing their appearance with the streets and squares of Rome, the Mayan and Toltec cities also tried to look like La Venta. Monuments of architecture and crafts, platforms for ritual ball games, cultural achievements (hieroglyphic writing, calendar) - all these characteristic features of the Olmec civilization are now preserved and inherited by the peoples inhabiting Mesoamerica, like the Latin of the Romans in the Old World, like Roman numerals and the Julian calendar. It is among the Olmecs that an elite is formed for the first time in the history of this region. It was the Olmecs who first began to worship the main deity of Mesoamerica - the Jaguar. The Olmecs also created a number system corresponding to that of the Maya.
Olmec stone heads
The round faces of the statues look swollen and sometimes resemble the plump faces of children (photo: historic.ru) A stone head found a century and a half ago made historians talk about a mysterious people who lived in ancient times on the outskirts of Mexico and were distinguished by their love for huge statues. Now we know that the design was not statues - heads. They certainly can be called one of the strangest sculptures in the world. Round heads, without any hint of a neck, rest directly on the ground. In principle, they can only be compared with commemorative idols from Easter Island. Let those on average be three to four times higher, but the heads of the Olmecs are more than two thousand years older, and they are much more skillfully executed. The largest of them reaches a height of 3.4 meters and weighs 50 tons.
The monumental sculpture of the Olmecs - in comparison with the European one - is almost reduced to balls topped with some kind of helmet - a headdress that was worn during a ritual ball game. With inexpressible sadness, these, as if beheaded, heads look at us. Archaeologists do not know who served as the prototype for unusual sculptures: the Olmec rulers, their warriors, or maybe famous ball players (according to one hypothesis, executed ball players)? After all, we sometimes honor athletes more than writers or scientists!
The round faces of the statues look swollen and sometimes resemble the plump faces of children. They have thick, often frankly capricious lips, large almond-shaped eyes, a rounded chin, fleshy cheeks, and very flat, wide noses. The forehead, often quite high, is hidden under a tightly pulled down helmet, the edge of which almost reaches the eyes, and the side plates cover the ears. The back of the head, as a rule, is finished very carelessly or not at all. Helmets are only outlined. Apparently, the sculptors paid the main attention to the faces of these people, trying to convey their individual features with amazing liveliness and realism. Looking at these images, one can seem to recognize the moods and characters of their prototypes. Some look at you with surprise, sometimes openly cheerful, others are very angry or vicious.
These heads were cut down in the Las Tustlas mountain range and delivered 60 to 125 kilometers to the place where they were installed. Their transportation is a brilliant "engineering" solution. According to historians, right in the quarries, the blanks of future sculptures were laid on skids and dragged to the nearest river, from where they were floated on large rafts. And already right on the spot, where they intended to install another commemorative head, the craftsmen began to grind this bulk, cutting lips, eye sockets, and a thick, flattened nose into it. In the same way, probably, other Olmec monuments were built, striking in their size.
The skill of stone cutters is also surprising, because the tools with which they processed basalt blocks were the most primitive: stone chisels, simple drills and sand, which replaced sandpaper. The Olmecs had no metal tools and no stone tools harder than basalt!
Who were these "sculptors"? Where did they come from? Why did they take up their hard labor? “All these are questions that, unfortunately, the Olmecs do not want to answer to us,” emphasizes the German archaeologist Hans Prem. At the time of their appearance in this part of Mexico, the local Indians “led a nomadic way of life; new tribal unions constantly arose, and therefore it makes no sense to talk about the concept of "ethnos".
Heyerdahl's predecessors?
Mysterious relief with a snake attacking a man Talking about the origin of the Olmecs, scientists have put forward several hypotheses that seem very curious.
Some historians are looking for the origin of this people on the Pacific coast of Mexico - in the state of Guerrero. But this is the least sensational theory, since it recognizes the Olmecs as in fact the original natives of these places.
According to another hypothesis, they came here from the coast of Ecuador, where one of the oldest ceramic cultures in the New World developed in 3000-2700 BC. It is possible that some of the tribes there eventually moved far north, to Mexico, wandering along the Isthmus of Panama or moving on ships and boats along the coast.
Finally, the third and, perhaps, the most unexpected hypothesis says that the Olmecs are a people that formed far from the coast of America, somewhere in Africa, Asia (Mongolia, China) or on the islands of Oceania. It is supported by the fact that the famous stone heads have a certain similarity with both the Negroids and the narrow-eyed inhabitants of East and Southeast Asia, as well as with the Polynesians. These thick-lipped, narrow-eyed statues would look just as appropriate somewhere on the coast of Ghana or southern China. They are nothing like the portraits of the Maya or the Aztecs known to us from later wall paintings.
Perhaps it was the Olmec rulers who were the very people (or deities) that the myths of the Aztecs and Mayans tell about, these “cultural heroes” who sailed from the sea to teach the inhabitants of Mexico everything without which culture is unthinkable, that is, art and craft , the ability to cultivate the land and count the passage of time. So far, there is no confirmation of this hypothesis, but it cannot be ruled out, because in recent decades, enthusiasts, starting with Thor Heyerdahl, have proved that people of antiquity could swim across the oceans on the most primitive boats, winning their place under the sun somewhere “at distant lands, thirty seas". Isn't that what the Olmec writings say?
The puzzling language of Cascajal
The figurine of this scribe from Cuilapan involuntarily resembles an Egyptian scribe. In 1999, in the state of Veracruz, while laying a road, a stone slab was accidentally found - the so-called "Cascajal panel" measuring 36 x 21 x 13 centimeters. This slab resembles an A4 sheet cut out of stone, only noticeably thicker and weighing about 12 kilograms. According to current ideas, not a very suitable thing to write something on it. However, it was she who served the Olmecs as a "notebook".
In 2006, it was possible to prove that the drawings imprinted on this stone are hieroglyphs (previously, researchers have repeatedly found images of icons left by the Olmecs, but it was not possible to unequivocally confirm that these are written symbols). The Cascajal slab is a much more compelling argument in favor of the Olmecs' ability to express thoughts, if not on paper, then on stone tablets. According to Mexican archaeologists Carmen Rodriguez Martinez and Ponciano Ortiz Ceballos in an article published in the journal Science, in this case we are talking about Olmec hieroglyphic writing, the oldest written monument found in America. It dates from around 900 BC.
Among the images inscribed on the stone, there are likenesses of fish, insects, maize cobs. There are 62 characters in total, and some are repeated more than once. By all external signs, this set of characters corresponds to the written text. All icons are clearly separated from each other and arranged in separate horizontal lines. The division of icons into different groups, each consisting of several characters, is clearly guessed. Several times a certain sequence of characters is repeated. According to linguists, this may indicate that we are dealing with a poetic work, where there are refrains of individual lines. So this inscription can also be considered the oldest monument of poetic art found in Mesoamerica.
Olmec miniature sculptures
That's just the meaning of the inscribed is completely incomprehensible to scientists. So far, deciphering the Olmec inscriptions seems hopeless. Indeed, even the Egyptian hieroglyphs, brought to us by numerous papyri and obelisks, could only be read after the Rosetta Stone was found with inscriptions in ancient Greek and two types of ancient Egyptian writing - demotic and hieroglyphic.
Perhaps the Olmec language will be unraveled when new inscriptions are discovered. It is hardly surprising that the only lengthy text left by the Olmecs is on a stone slab. Entire libraries of historical, legal, poetic texts of this lost civilization could be inscribed on materials of plant origin, long decayed in the tropical climate of Mesoamerica. This find, believes the famous German specialist in Maya culture, Nikolai Grube, decisively changes our understanding of the Olmec culture: "Now we have the right to believe that writing in Ancient America originated in the Gulf of Mexico."
So, the first scribes appeared in America at the latest around 900 BC? Until now, scientists believed that this happened four centuries later. In the Old World, namely in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the first written texts date back to the 3rd and even 4th millennium BC. Does this mean that the ancient Americans were far behind in their development from the builders of the first powers of the Ancient East? Maybe we still do not know the archeology of the New World well, and somewhere in the backwoods, “stone letters” of distant millennia are still waiting to be discovered?
It is curious that the surface of this stone slab is concave, and this indicates a unique technique for applying inscriptions: the old text was obviously scraped off, and then new signs were carved on the cleaned surface. Another unexpected discovery!
Neither fathers nor mothers...
Stone altar from La Venta, presumably with the figure of a priestAmong the whirlwind of the tribes that inhabited Ancient Mesoamerica, in a series of their alliance and enmity, the Olmecs appeared “like snow on their heads”, “like a tornado in the steppe”. Their name - "people of the country of rubber", however, was invented. It is known that in the Gulf of Mexico during the time of the Aztecs, that is, shortly before the arrival of the Spaniards in Mexico, there lived a people who called themselves the Olmecs. It was this name that in the first half of the 20th century was given to the creators of an unknown culture of the Bronze Age, discovered in Mexico. In fact, there is no evidence that the contemporaries of the Aztecs were descendants of that mysterious people that created about three thousand years ago the culture that we today call "Olmec". What those ancient people called themselves, honored by the accidental nickname - "Olmecs", we really do not know. Modern researchers more often, by the way, use the more correct term "people of the culture of La Venta."
It is not difficult to guess that a strict hierarchy was established in the Olmec society - there is no other way to explain the appearance of these basalt monuments, which required an incredible effort. Such sculptures could only be created where a small group of people, who constituted the elite, commanded many citizens belonging to the lower caste - among the workers who could be sent a hundred kilometers to transport multi-ton stone blocks. Historians continue to argue about who ruled Olmec society - "leaders", deified kings or priest-kings.
They also discuss other aspects of Olmec history and culture. Is it true that they were the progenitors of all subsequent cultures of Mesoamerica? According to the apt remark of Nikolai Grube, “they were neither fathers nor mothers; they were brothers, because chronologically they lived at the same time with some of them. Of course, the Olmecs to a very large extent influenced the Mayan world, but, meanwhile, "in the lowlands of Guatemala, the Mayan culture was formed quite independently."
Did they create their own "empire"? So far, we do not have any facts proving the presence of this "superpower of American antiquity" on the world map. Anthropologist from the United States Doris Hayden writes in this regard: “Some scientists see only an artistic style in the Olmec phenomenon ... A good example for comparison would be the Gothic style, which originated in France and became widespread in other European countries, in Germany, England and Spain, moreover that we have no right to speak of a certain "Gothic Empire" that existed in those centuries. Probably, we also cannot talk about the existence of the Olmec power.
In turn, other historians, having denied the Olmecs the right to pass with fire and sword from Monterrey to San Salvador, like the Assyrians or the Aztecs, diligently decorate them with “whisks of roses”, talk about their “amazing peacefulness”, about their unwillingness to fight and dislike for weapons, which is also debatable.
Perhaps this sculptural group La Venta depicts an assembly of priests
Only one thing can be said with certainty, that the Olmecs actively developed the lands surrounding the area of their settlement. Archaeologists find their colonies and trading posts far from their original possessions. It is authentically known that the trade relations of the Olmecs stretched for more than one and a half thousand kilometers. They traded with distant regions in iron ore, shells, minerals, tortoise shells, stingray bones, jade products, and ceramic vessels.
Some researchers do not even exclude the possibility that they could maintain contact with the civilizations of Peru, because there they also revered a deity in the form of a jaguar, which was worshiped by the Olmecs. What if they also established their colonies on the coast of Peru?
And now everyone is disappearing - both the ancient colonies and the Olmecs themselves ...
The geography of the flight
At the turn of the 5th - 4th centuries BC, La Venta was destroyed, and the colossal Olmec heads were deliberately damaged.
Historians do not know why the largest Olmec cities perished. It looks like their population was fleeing. Perhaps the reason was the war with one of the neighboring cities, which forced the inhabitants of the defeated metropolis to seek salvation. Another likely cause is a civil war or an uprising of peasants who refused to obey the elite. Another disaster could be "collapse": the population of cities increased to such an extent that they could not find food for themselves. So, a thousand years later, an economic catastrophe stopped the further development of the Mayan civilization (see "3-C", 1/07).
However, the history of the Olmecs is still a different case. It does not seem that they have exhausted all development resources. And there are no signs of natural destruction here. Cities are not burned to the ground, not plundered. They, if such a technical term is appropriate, were "systematically dismantled." The monuments were scraped off, hewn off, smashed into pieces, and then carefully buried on the surrounding hills. There are no cases in history when invaders or rebellious poor treated the fallen shrines so respectfully.
Maybe the Olmecs ritually destroyed their religious centers? In the later cultures of Mesoamerica, it was traditionally believed that a certain life cycle ended every 52 years. After that, various ceremonies were performed that brought renewal. Perhaps these beliefs date back to the time of the Olmecs. And if the rituals did not bring the desired help, and the hardships and troubles only continued to grow, then maybe the frightened people decided to sacrifice the ancient temples and the city in which their ancestors had lived for many centuries? What if for this reason San Lorenzo and then La Venta were abandoned? After all, these are not the first and not the last capitals left by their people. Unless here, departing for a new city, the inhabitants of the former capital solemnly buried its spirit itself, dismantling the worthless shrines and sending them to the kingdom of the dead - burying them in the ground. Now the past could no longer prevent them from building a life in a new place. The gods, who “must have gone mad” and instead of good began to bring only evil, were sent to that world, from where no one has ever returned.
Olmec sculptures
In addition to the colossal heads, almost three hundred more monumental sculptures left by the Olmecs were discovered. It is primarily about the stelae that they installed everywhere, and giant altars. The largest altar was about four meters long, one and a half meters wide and 1.8 meters high.
In addition, the Olmecs made miniature sculptures from terracotta, obsidian, amethyst and rock crystal, but primarily from jade. The most expressive are the so-called Babyfaces, "baby heads", or Tigerfaces, "tiger heads". In them, even more clearly than in the colossal heads, the resemblance to children puffed up with anger is expressed. Some make creepy faces. Perhaps these portraits are somehow connected with the cult of the jaguar deity? Maybe the Olmecs considered their rulers to be earthly incarnations of the "Great Jaguar"?
This is also hinted at by a stone altar found in La Venta. A crouching human figure is visible in a semi-circular niche under the table top - perhaps a priest - while a stylized image of a jaguar grinning savagely is engraved on the edge of the table.
The wind knows the answer
It seems that archaeologists have managed to answer the question of where the Olmecs got the jade from which they made their skillful figurines. As you know, when the Spanish conquistadors conquered America, they looked everywhere for gold and silver, but, to the surprise of the Indians, they remained indifferent to the most valuable thing in the world - to "blue jade", a rare bluish-green variety of this mineral, usually colored to whitish green. The Indians used this mineral, at the earliest, from 1400 BC. The Olmecs carved human figures and masks from it, designed to inspire horror. But where did they get these valuable stones from?
“The wind knows the answer,” archaeologists would say. When another hurricane hit Central America in 1998, it led to numerous landslides. At the same time, in some rivers of Guatemala, whole placers of blue jade were suddenly discovered. The American archaeologist Russell Seitz, who had been searching for its deposits for decades, turned out to be sensitive to this sign and began to explore the banks of the rivers in the mountainous area in the south-east of Guatemala. There he found what he was looking for: meter-long walls of jade, shimmering in blue and green tones. The archaeologist discovered here both abandoned ancient mines and the remains of a road along which the Indians exported valuable raw materials. The location of the mines was kept in the strictest confidence - for fear that robbers would penetrate here.
The place where the writing is
Olmec writings were discovered in a quarry near the village of Kaskajal ("Place where there is rubble"). Builders have been quarrying stone here for years to pave roads, and archaeologists have explored this quarry with the same tenacity in search of ancient artifacts. When in 1999, workers discovered fragments of pottery and clay figurines here, the find attracted the attention of archaeologists, and soon an inconspicuous, at first glance, slab covered with ancient hieroglyphs was found in the same area of the quarry.
The history of the stone from Cascajal is amazing; some scientists even refuse to believe in the "miraculous salvation" of this plate. “These kinds of sensational finds, completely taken out of the archaeological context, often turned out to be fakes,” admits Hans Prem. "That's why the title of a Science article - 'The Oldest Script of the New World' - should at least be accompanied by a question mark."
About three thousand years ago, an Indian culture arose on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, called the Olmec. This conditional name was given by the name of the Olmecs - a small group of Indian tribes who lived in this territory much later, in XI- XIV centuries. The very name "Olmecs", which means "rubber people", is of Aztec origin.
The Aztecs named them after the area on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico where rubber was produced and where the contemporary Olmecs lived. So actually the Olmecs and the Olmec culture are not at all the same thing. This circumstance is extremely difficult to understand for non-specialists like G. Hancock, who dedicated many pages to the Olmecs in his book "Traces of the Gods". Such publications only confuse the problem, while at the same time not explaining anything on the merits of the case.
The civilization of the ancient Olmecs, the beginning of which dates back to the second millennium BC. e., ceased to exist in the first years of our era and one and a half thousand years before the rise of the Aztec empire. The Olmec culture is sometimes called the "mother of cultures" of Central America and the earliest civilization of Mexico.
Oddly enough, despite all the efforts of archaeologists, nowhere in Mexico, as well as in America in general, has so far not been able to find any traces of the origin and evolution of the Olmec civilization, the stages of its development, the place of its origin, as if this people appeared as already fit.
Absolutely nothing is known about the social organization of the Olmecs, nor about their beliefs and rituals - except for human sacrifices. We do not know what language the Olmecs spoke, what ethnic group they belonged to. And the extremely high humidity in the Gulf of Mexico led to the fact that not a single Olmec skeleton was preserved.
The culture of the ancient Olmecs was the same "corn civilization" as the rest of the pre-Columbian cultures of America. The main sectors of the economy were agriculture and fishing. The remains of religious buildings of this civilization - pyramids, platforms, statues - have survived to this day. The ancient Olmecs cut down stone blocks and carved massive sculptures from them. Some of them depict huge heads, known today as "Olmec heads". These stone heads are the biggest mystery of the ancient civilization...
Monumental sculptures weighing up to 30 tons depict the heads of people with undoubtedly Negroid features. These are almost portrait images of Africans in tight-fitting helmets with a chin strap. The earlobes are pierced. The face is cut with deep wrinkles on both sides of the nose. The corners of the thick lips are turned down.
Despite the fact that the heyday of the Olmec culture falls on 1500-1000 BC. e., there is no certainty that the heads were carved in this era, since the radiocarbon dating of pieces of coal found nearby gives only the age of the coals themselves. Perhaps the stone heads are much younger.
The first stone head was discovered in the 1930s by American archaeologist Matthew Stirling. He wrote in his report: "The head was carved from a separate massive basalt block.
She rested on a foundation of uncut stone blocks. Being cleared from the ground, the head had a rather intimidating appearance. Despite its significant size, it is crafted very carefully and confidently, its proportions are perfect. Unique among Native American sculptures, it is notable for its realism. Her features are distinct and clearly of a Negro type.
By the way, Stirling made another discovery - he discovered children's toys in the form of dogs on wheels. This innocent, at first glance, discovery was actually a sensation - after all, it was believed that the civilizations of pre-Columbian America did not know the wheel. But it turns out that this rule does not apply to the ancient Olmecs ...
However, it soon turned out that the Maya Indians, the southern contemporaries of the ancient Olmecs, also made toys on wheels, but did not use the wheel in their economic practice.
Big riddle not here - the roots of such ignoring the wheel go to the mentality of the Indians and to the "corn economy". In this regard, the ancient Olmecs differed little from other Indian civilizations.
In addition to heads, the ancient Olmecs left numerous examples of monumental sculpture. All of them are carved from basalt monoliths or other durable stone. On the Olmec stelae one can see scenes of the meeting of two distinctly different human races. One of them is Africans. And in one of the Indian pyramids, located near the Mexican city of Oaxaca, there are several stone steles with scenes of the captivity of bearded white people and ... Africans by the Indians.
Olmec heads and images on steles are physiologically exact images real representatives of the Negroid race, whose presence in Central America 3000 years ago is still a mystery. How could Africans have appeared in the New World before Columbus? Maybe they were native Americans? There is evidence from paleoanthropologists that as part of one of the migrations to the territory of the American continent during the last ice age, people of the Negroid race really got into it. This migration took place around 1500 BC. e.
There is another assumption - that in ancient times contacts were made between Africa and America across the ocean, which, as it turned out in recent decades, did not at all separate ancient civilizations. The assertion that the New World was isolated from the rest of the world, which dominated science for a long time, was convincingly refuted by Thor Heyerdahl and Tim Severin, who proved that contacts between the Old and New Worlds could have taken place long before Columbus.
The Olmec civilization ceased to exist in last century BC. But their culture did not die - it organically entered the cultures of the Aztecs and Mayans.
And the Olmecs? In fact, the only "calling card" they left behind is giant stone heads. African heads...
